The EU has warned that European airports must coordinate their approach to lifting the ban on carrying liquids.

From this Friday transfer passengers travelling on flights originating outside the EU will be permitted to carry duty-free perfume and alcohol onto connecting flights as the first phase in a strategy to relax the ban. However, transport secretary Philip Hammond said this will not happen in the UK “for security reasons”.

A total lift on the liquid ban will be implemented at all European airports by April 2013; but EU transport commissioner Siim Kallas said that if the changes aren’t simultaneous then air passengers will face disastrous consequences.

Kallas told The Guardian newspaper: “If some countries lift the ban and some do not then it will be disastrous.”

“Some airports are questioning the rationality of lifting the ban because life is easier to continue as it is. Politically that is unacceptable.”

If some airports adhere to the ruling and some continuethe ban, then there are likely to be long queues as confused travellers go from one airport that allows liquids to a plane heading for another that does not.